Our Blog - Germany 2023 - Part 2

And now on to Part 2 of our Germany 2023 trip and blog.

We headed to the city of Freiburg to look around, specifically for the Cathedral and the open market. A bit of trivia: the "Breisgau" area of southwest Germany, which sits between the Rhine River and the foothills of the Black Forest is the warmest region in Germany.

Then over into one of the wine-growing regions, the Kaiserstuhl. This is actually a set of hills that literally translates to "Emperor's chair". We did a bit of wine tasting (and buying), specifically wines produced from a varietal grown here called the Weißer Burgunder grape, better outside of this area of Germany as Pinot Blanc. We also stopped at the town of Endingen for a quick look around.

From our balcony, we had a nice view of the yard area ... we took Lucy out there each afternoon to play with the ball, and she definitely enjoyed it!

For our last night at this hotel before heading to Stuttgart, we ate at the hotel. After a few nights of what I would call "rustic German" food, this was a bit more up-scale German. We started with a pumpkin soup (with all of the fixin's) and then our main courses were a venison stew and a veal cutlet with a cream sauce (both served with homemade spätzle). Tom even went for a "small" dessert!

We checked out and headed towards Stuttgart, where we will stay for a few days. On the way, we did a morning Lucy-walk out in the countryside, with some great views and puppy-friendly (trashcan and puppy poop bags)! One thing that we have seen quite a bit here is that there tends to be benches installed along these walks where you can sit and look out at the countryside.

After the walk, we stopped at the spa-town of Baden-Baden for a look around. I would have enjoyed (I think) the Faberge museum, but I didn't feel like having Tom and Lucy sit on a park bench for an hour while I looked at the eggs.

We stayed a couple nights in Stuttgart and we out-and-about several times, so the Stuttgart blog is a combination of the pictures across a couple of days. We didn't get to see much of one of the churches, and a friend of mine from when we were kids was unfortunately not in town during our trip, which means we'll have to go back there again soon!

First night out in Stuttgart with traditional Swabian cuisine. Tom started drinking beer and I stuck with a local red wine (well, I think it was local). Next was Flädle soup, which is a clear broth served with thin pancakes cut into strips and dropped in right before serving, so that they don't absorb the broth too quickly.

She recommended a combined plate that had roast beef with caramelized onions, served with spätzle, sauerkraut, and maultaschen. The maultaschen are dumplings filled with ground or minced meat, onion, spinach and soaked stale bread. Their nickname is Herrgottsbscheißerle, which means little God-cheaters, because as legend says they were first prepared by monks who wanted to evade the Lenten meat prohibition, and the monks supposedly thought that God could not see the meat inside the pasta. The close-up is not the best, but you can see the various things inside.

Sometimes people wonder how Lucy plays on vacation .... sometimes, when we are in a hotel with a long hallway ..... (sorry for the devil-dog eyes)

Most hotels are pretty good with dogs, in general, but here, they even provided her a little dog bed!

After a walk in a small forest outside of Stuttgart, we headed to the medieval spa town of Bad Wimpfen for a tour.

More Schwabian food tonight, starting off with Gaisburger Marsch stew, which is a clear meat soup with pieces of diced beef, diced potatoes, and spätzle.

Our two main courses included Ochs'n Wills knusprige Riexenhaxe (the restaurant is called Och'n Wills) and this is a crispy grilled giant leg of pork served with a bread dumpling called a Semmelknödel, and a cabbage salad. Needless to say, I think we could have JUST ordered this and skipped the 2nd main course!!

The 2nd main course was Schwäbische Maultaschen, which is the same dumplings we had before but in a "main course" size, paired with a potato-cucumber salad.

The next day, we opted to skip the puppy walk and head directly to the Hohenzollern Castle to look around and have a quick lunch of Curry Wurst, and then to the town of Tübingen before heading back to Stuttgart for our last night there.

Continue to Part 3 of the Germany 2023 blog, which will take us back across to the East a bit to Lake Constance (Konstanz in German), which is actually 3 bodies of water (Upper Lake Constance, Lower Lake Constance, and Lake Rhine). They are situated where Germany, Switzerland, and Austria meet.